Satire
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich
A collection of humorous fiction by renowned Canadian writer, Stephen Leacock. Unlike the lighter Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town that pr…
The Pleasures of Ignorance
From the pen of the Irish poet and essayist, Robert Lynd, comes a collection of humorous and satirical essays on topics as wide ranging as c…
Mrs. Pretty and The Premier
The Premier has decided that being married would be good for his image. He asks his stenographer for advice: (Premier) Good. Just jot me dow…
The Tenth Cow
When Teddy Kagan finds a pure red heifer (heifer: a young, virgin cow) on the Florida ranch of a TV evangelist, he knows - because he knows …
The Follies of a Day
This is Thomas Holcroft's English translation, obtained by attending Pierre Beaumarchais' French play nine times in Paris during its origina…
Cynthia's Revels
"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600, and, as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and…
Candida
This play tells the story of Candida, the wife of a famous clergyman, the Reverend James Mavor Morell. Morell is a Christian Socialist, po…
The Princess Pourquoi
Once upon a time, a princess was born, and a fairy cursed her with a mind: "She is a woman-child, and yet she shall think. She shall be…
The Satyrs of Decimus Junius Juvenalis
16 satires in verse of the celebrated classical poet of the 1st and 2nd Century translated into verse by John Dryden an English satirist of …
Prejudices
Mencken is famous for his sometimes-savage attacks on almost everything humans can in their stupidity and priggishness and prejudice conjure…
The Female Quixote
The Female Quixote is a witty and insightful satire that turns the conventions of romance on their head. In this novel, Arabella, a young wo…
The Magnificent Lovers
"The King [Louis XIV], who will have nothing but what is magnificent in all he undertakes, wished to give his court an entertainment wh…
How to Make a Man of Consequence
Mark Lemon had a natural talent for journalism and the stage, and, at twenty-six, retired from less congenial business to devote himself to …
The New Republic
A group of upper class men and women gather together in an English country house to discuss their ideas for a utopia (their "New Republ…
A Traveller from Altruria
Set in the early 1890s, at a fashionable summer resort somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, this book tells the story of Mr. T…
A Treatise of Religion
Part diatribe, part discourse, part sermon and part stand-up comedy, this is Fulke Greville's 114 stanza, verse-poem about religious hypocri…
Cinderella
If you are expecting glass slippers and pumpkin coaches, look elsewhere... This is "a pantomime as Ibsen would have written it, if only…
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
In Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions—written by Edwin Abbott Abbott—readers are presented with a question. What if the world were flat?…
The World of Fashion
This Victorian-era dramedy was adapted by playwright/critic John Oxenford from Eugene Scribe and Ernst Legouvé’s “Les doigts de f&eac…
The Conscious Lovers
As early as 1720 Steele spoke in the Theatre of "a friend of mine" who was lately preparing a comedy according to the just laws of…